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Saturday, February 19, 2011

Not My Job

Thank you again for all your well wishes!!!

I'm feeling much better, in fact pretty much back to normal. Darling Husband isn't so fortunate. It's his turn now. He's such a trooper though. He complains about it way less than I did. So, in order to catch up from being paused, we're in fast forward. A nice steady play would work for me.

I have had so many plates spinning this week that I don't know which end is up. For those who are unfamiliar with the plate spinning term I offer the following for your entertainment.

Good stuff, huh? With that said, this is probably going to be a semi-ranty post about having too much going on. You've been warned.

I've mentioned before that I work from home and run my very own company. That's right, I'm the CEO of a fully functional S Corporation. It sounds way more impressive than it is in reality. And I don't usually get into too much detail about my clients and such because of a super secret contract that I had to sign to work with them. However, while I will be changing the names to protect the innocent (and the guilty) I'm going to give you a bit of insight into what I do and why sometimes it stresses me so.

Mostly I love my job. Seriously. I have the best. Job. Ever. I manage (not really a word I'm supposed to use, we say 'support') a group of online chatters. "What does that mean?" you ask. Well you know how you can go to certain online websites and get a live chat agent to help you with your shopping or product questions? That's us. Well them.

The beauty of being your own boss is that you don't have to deal with all the corporate bullshit, in a perfect world. No one directs you How or When to do your job as long as it gets done, in a perfect world. However this week has been far from perfect. You see, the client company goes crazy every February. They start digging into metrics, like really digging, like with a backhoe. My theory on this is that its because sales are slow. They also dramastically (thank you Raising Hope for one of my favorite new words) cut the hours they pay for. No prob. I needed the extra time to pack anyway.

This past week however, they dictated that of my whopping 22 hours I'm getting paid for, I had to spend 18 of it doing a rather non-productive online exercise with the chatters. It's called Live Monitoring and you essentially sit there and read their chats while they are going on. That left 4 hours for everything else that I do for my team. Reporting their numbers, reviewing customer satisfaction surveys and scores, fielding questions and calls from my peeps (that's what I call my chatters), the various other need it now stuff that the client and those I report to directly throw out there, and the 5 hours of telephone meetings. Is it me or is this no longer adding up?

On top of packing, keeping up with my suddenly way over-scheduled daughter's social calendar, my crazy and guilt mongering mother (that's a whole 'nother thing that I won't be getting into here - you can thank me later), I'm working for free because I can't just let the stuff go undone. At least when I'm getting paid, I can justify the not packing and not dealing with the other crap because 'hey, I'm getting paid', right? Wrong.

I'm declaring my independence. It's not my job, to deal with my mother's craziness so I cut her off from all of us until after we move. It's not my job to work for free when I have other stuff that I clearly should be doing, so I have taken a leave until I get my office re-setup in Idaho. It sort of is my job to keep up with J's social calendar but most of her friends have made it pretty easy for me. Coming and picking up and dropping back off with only a couple of exceptions. Sometimes even just removing a couple of things can make all the difference and give you back the illusion of some semblance of control, I've not got so many plates spinning and I am much more centered and at peace.

At least as much as that is possible when my house looks like the morning after a frat party sans beer cans and bongs.

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About Me

I try to be kinder than necessary in real life but sometimes that makes me feel like I might need to scream, or explode. Hence the blog. Hopefully this blog will be funny, and thoughtful. There is much in life to celebrate and still plenty of things to bitch about. I intend to have both because I believe that even in the darkest times there is a funny or two to be found and celebrations just deserve to be celebrate.